Dusting the studies done (Soggin, Noth, Mazzinghi, Acquistapace,...), as a result of the defeat of the First Jewish Revolt and the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD, half of the Jewish population in Palestine was exterminated: Tacitus and Titus Flavius Josephus reported the figure of 600,000 deaths (about 25% of the population ), many others were captured and sold into slavery. It seems that nearly half of the Jewish population was physically eliminated.
However, the Romans did not nurtured a particular animosity towards Judaism as a religion (religio licita).
With the destruction of the Temple had failed throughout the priesthood and the religious world associated with it. There remained, therefore, only the Pharisees. They were a traditionalist group, not related to official structures, characterized by the zealous observance of the Torah, observance that brooked no compromise. This their rigor, combined with great availability, made them very followed by the people. Were in fact the Pharisees, after the destruction of the Temple, with the canon of the Bible and the collection of exegetical and ethical standards that have allowed Israel to survive two millennia of diaspora.
The Temple had long since lost its prestige, and this explains why, unlike the return from Babylonian exile, has not been considered to reconstruct it. The doctrines and way of life of the Pharisees became the Judaism as we know it today.
The last major uprising took place under the reign of Emperor Hadrian. The news is very scarce. For Dion Cassius the Jews had rebelled because Adriano had founded the city of Aelia Capitolina on the ruins of Jerusalem, inaugurating a temple to Jupiter and profaning the holy places by building pagan buildings. For other sources, such as Eusebius of Caesarea, the revolt broke out due to a law enacted by Adriano which equated circumcision to castration, therefore making it a prohibited practice.
With the victory of Hadrian in 135 AD, the Roman repression was tremendous: 850,000 dead, most prisoners enslaved.
Jerusalem, turned in Aelia Capitolina, it was rebuilt according to Roman urban characteristics (cardus and decumanus, etc ..., on the site of the Temple were erected statues of Jupiter and of the Emperor, on the Calvary was built the Forum with the memory of the Jupiter's return from the netherworld); Jews were forbidden to enter, the Jewish celebrations, circumcision, the possession of the scrolls of the Torah (only in the fourth century, Emperor Constantine grants the Jews to go to Jerusalem only once a year, on the 9th of the month of Ab (July-August), the anniversary of the destruction of the city).
The Iudea was renamed Palaestina: Israel thus became the "Promised Land" where to return, desire expressed in the traditional Easter greeting «next year in Jerusalem».
Christians, still few and mostly Jewish converts, having at their head a gentile bishop (of pagan blood, finished the series of bishops that Eusebius called "of the circumcision"), although it remained linked to the customs still typically Jewish, were not disturbed: Jerusalem remained a secondary see, while the only important Christian center until the fourth century was Caesarea Maritima.